Sexmob Plays Fellini

Trumpeter Steven Bernstein’s week begins with his long-running band Sex Mob, playing music from their 2013 album devoted to the immortal soundtrack composer and Federico Fellini collaborator Nino Rota, Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti: Sex Mob Play Fellini. Recently celebrating its twentieth year, the quartet has honed a singular sound marked by high-energy, protean group improvisation and rollicking grooves unlike any other band on the planet. Originally formed for a weekly residency at New York’s Knitting Factory, they’ve earned a devoted fan base with boisterous deconstructions of tunes by a shaggy menagerie of pop acts, from Abba and James Brown to Prince and Elvis Presley, and released nine superlative albums for the Ropeadope, Columbia, Rex, Thirsty Ear, and Royal Potato labels. For these shows, Sex Mob revisits the gorgeous music Rota composed for Fellini classics La Dolce Vita, Amarcord, La Strada, reimagined for their signature collision of punk rock spirit and sophisticated interplay.

ABOUT STEVEN BERNSTEIN
A master of the previously obscure slide trumpet, Berkeley-born Steven Bernstein is a fearless improviser, composer and arranger whose résumé includes collaboration with Bill Frisell, Levon Helm, Lou Reed, Linda Ronstadt, Henry Butler, and Allen Toussaint. He leads the cinematically inspired band Sex Mob, the Millennial Territory Orchestra – an ensemble rooted in the territory bands of the 1920s and 30s, and the Butler-Bernstein Hot 9 devoted to the early jazz of Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton.

«The band Sexmob specializes in a distinct strain of deconstructionist improvised music: jazz that aims at fun by bouncing off the walls.» -NPR Music